Chapter 4 - The Fleet in the Driveway
Through the divided-light panes of the front bay window, the yard looked like a commercial staging area.
The twin work-lamps mounted to the headache rack of the Finch Peterbilt cast long, blinding white shadows across my grass. Vic Ostrander was standing beside the hydraulic controls on the side of the bed, his thick, grease-stained Carhartt jacket unzipped in the damp wind, an unlit Swisher Sweet cigar clamped between his molars.
Standing beside him were two of our senior crew leaders: Hector Ramos and Dave Keller.
Hector had been with me nineteen years. When his second boy had open-heart surgery at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital back in 2014, the company paid the three months of out-of-pocket expenses while Hector stayed by that bedside. Dave was twenty-seven, an ex-Marine who ran our hydro-seeding crew with the precision of an artillery team.
Neither of them was smiling. They had their steel-toed boots planted in the limestone gravel of my drive, watching the house.
Behind them, hooked to the heavy steel cable of the Peterbilt’s Ramsey winch, was Candace’s pearlescent-white Cadillac Escalade.
The winch drum turned with a slow, mechanical groan—*whir-clack-clack-clack*—as the front tires of the SUV left the gravel and began their slow climb up the diamond-plate ramps.
Candace tore the front door open so hard the brass handle struck the dry-wall stop and punched clean through the plaster.
“Get your filthy hands off my car!” she shrieked, running out onto the porch in her high heels.
The heels hit the wet decking, slipped, and she went down hard on one knee, her black slacks taking the wet grime of the pine boards. Stuart lunged after her, catching her under the arm before she tumbled down the three steps into the mud.
“Vic!” Candace screamed, her voice breaking into ragged, ugly sobs. “Vic Ostrander, you stop that right now! Trey pays your salary! We sign your checks!”
Vic didn't take the cigar out of his mouth. He didn't even turn his head. He kept his left hand on the hydraulic lever, feathering the valve until the heavy truck settled squarely onto the steel bed of the hauler.
“Miss Candace,” Vic said through his teeth, his voice carrying clearly over the diesel clatter. “I’ve been cashing checks from this company since you were in middle school. The only name that ever cleared the bank without a three-day hold was Arthur’s. And as of noon today, my direct deposit instructions come from Mr. Sterling’s office.”
Dave Keller stepped forward with two heavy, five-ton transport chains. He knelt by the rear axle of the Escalade, threw the hook around the suspension link, and jammed the binder down with a sharp *crack* that signaled the car wasn't going anywhere unless the Peterbilt went with it.
Stuart was helping Candace up, his own face gray and slick with sweat.
“You people are committing grand theft auto!” Stuart roared, pointing a trembling finger at the men. “I have the registration in the glove box! It has my daughter’s name on the secondary operator line!”
“Secondary operator isn't the owner, Mr. Holloway,” Thomas Sterling said from the porch. He was holding his overcoat closed with one hand, his legal papers secure under his arm. “The vehicle is the property of Finch Outdoor Services Fleet Operations. The court order specifically authorizes the recovery and securing of all corporate transport assets to prevent concealment or liquidation prior to the grand jury review on the fourth.”
“Grand jury?”
Trey had stepped out onto the porch now. He looked small. Without the posture he usually adopted in front of his friends at the marina, without the tailored jacket he’d bought with the company debit card, he looked like the nineteen-year-old kid who used to sit on the tailgate of my truck after a twelve-hour day with his hands blistered and his eyes full of fear that he wasn't tough enough to do the work.
“Dad,” Trey croaked. “Grand jury? You’re going to indict me?”
I walked down the steps. The rain was coming down heavier now, cold droplets hitting the back of my neck and soaking into the shoulders of my flannel. I didn't feel the chill.
I stopped at the bottom of the steps, three feet from my son.
“I didn't call the district attorney, Trey,” I told him. “The bank did. When an institution flags forty-two thousand dollars in wire fraud crossing state lines into an offshore account, they don't ask the daddy for permission to file a SAR. The Suspicious Activity Report goes to the state attorney general automatically.”
“You knew,” Trey said, his voice dropping into a desperate, hollow rasp. “You knew six weeks ago. That’s why you had Ben re-audit the third-quarter accounts.”
“I knew the day you stopped coming to the maintenance yard on Saturday mornings,” I said. “For thirty years, Trey, this business lived on grease and hydraulic fluid. We didn't leave the shop until every deck was scraped, every spindle was packed, and every blade was balanced on the stone. You stopped coming because you didn't want to look Vic in the eye. You stopped coming because you were spending your mornings at the country club trying to figure out how to sell this acreage to a condo developer out of Charlotte.”
Candace froze. Her head snapped toward Trey, then toward me.
“What acreage?” she asked. Her voice was suddenly very small.
I laughed, but there wasn't an ounce of joy in it.
“The four acres this house sits on,” I said, looking right at Stuart. “Trey told Stuart he had an option on the road frontage. Stuart took that option to an investment syndicate in Maryville and borrowed two hundred and ten thousand dollars against it to float his own debts on that bankrupt strip mall project on Western Avenue.”
Stuart took a step back, into the shadow of the porch column.
“You told me your father signed the option agreement, Trey,” Stuart stammered, his bravado completely disintegrated. “You showed me the signed memorandum!”
“He forged it, Stuart,” I said. “Just like he forged the equipment leases. Just like he forged the corporate resolutions. He sat in my kitchen, eating the food I cooked, and he sold off the dirt under my feet to save your skin from a foreclosure notice.”
Clark Donovan walked down the steps behind me. He looked at Trey, then at Stuart, shaking his massive head.
“You’re done in this county, Trey,” Clark said. “Every general contractor from here to Chattanooga knows Arthur Finch. His signature on a sub-contract is worth more than a bank bond. Yours? Yours isn't worth the toilet paper they stock at the service plaza.”
Hector Ramos walked past us, carrying a plastic crate. He climbed the porch steps, pushed open the front door, and came back out thirty seconds later carrying the company laptops, two external hard drives from the home office, and the corporate credit card terminal from the kitchen counter. He set them carefully in the back of Clark’s Raptor.
Candace watched the crate go. She looked at her Escalade, now fully chained to the flatbed, six feet off the ground. She looked at her parents: Stuart leaning against the porch railing like an old man whose knees had given out, Connie sitting on the second step with her head in her hands, weeping into her mink-trimmed coat.
“What are we supposed to leave in?” Candace asked. The venom had gone out of her voice, replaced by the ugly, flat panic of total ruin. “How do we get out of here?”
I pointed toward the gravel turnaround at the side of the house.
Parked under the dripping branches of the old walnut tree was a 2011 Honda Civic with a dent in the driver's side door and clear-coat peeling off the hood. It was the car Trey had driven when he was a sophomore at UT, the one we’d kept around as a spare runner for parts runs when the service trucks were all out on jobs.
“The keys are in the ignition,” I said. “It’s got half a tank of regular unleaded. The heater works if you keep it on the defrost setting.”
Candace stared at the Civic as if I had pointed to a pile of fresh manure.
“I’m not getting in that thing,” she whispered.
May you like
“Then you’d better start walking toward the county road,” Deputy Vance said, stepping down off the porch and checking his watch. “Because you have thirty-two minutes before I charge every person on this porch with criminal trespass.”
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